Age Of Mythology Gets Boardgame Treatment

Thanks to OgreCave.com for their first look at the Age Of Mythology board game, as Ensemble/Microsoft's popular RTS title follows the trend of videogames like Warcraft, and gets translated into a tabletop game courtesy of Eagle Games. The writer sees parallels to another popular new boardgame, saying "Given how much people talked about Puerto Rico's similarity to real-time strategy games when it came out, it just seems a little... strange to me that it and its designer aren't mentioned here", but overall, reckons this newly-released game "...looks like it'll be a blast to play."

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Further details

[misuba]

I posted the OgreCave post, and I've now played part of a game of AoM (the board game) and will probably post about it on OC once I get another try done. We played with four players, two playing Norse and two Greek. The important bit is that all these people were Puerto Rico fans and fans of the German stuff in general, rather than fans even of the more mildly grognardy stuff like Axis and Allies.

I think you have to be an Axis fan, or a potential Axis fan, to enjoy this game. Our group found its array of details frustrating to stumble through for the first time - the first (and sole) combat of the game had a giant on each team and no giant-killers on either. The giant that had one more die to roll won the first roll and killed the opposing giant, and from there the combat was just a dice-rolling exercise. (It didn't help that the losing player was particularly pissed at the game and wouldn't retreat.) It comes down to which units you've built and send into battle - very like an RTS, but not fun for Puerto Rico players.

For my next game, I think I'm gonna try two things: 1) let players in their first Age draw one additional card per turn; 2) if I'm still playing with people unlikely to be fans, forgo the rolling of dice altogether during combat, merely comparing unit stats instead, and see how that goes.

This all sounds like gobbledygook to most of you, but it might also give some impression of what's going on. I'll either post in more detail on OgreCave or have a full review the next time I play.